rently no attention whatever to the
impending and threatening presence of their formidable foes.

At length Xerxes concluded that it was time for him to act. On the
morning, therefore, of the fifth day, he called out a detachment of his
troops, sufficient, as he thought, for the purpose, and sent them down
the pass, with orders to seize all the Greeks that were there, and bring
them, _alive_, to him. The detachment that he sent was a body of Medes,
who were considered as the best troops in the army, excepting always the
Immortals, who, as has been before stated, were entirely superior to the
rest. The Medes, however, Xerxes supposed, would find no difficulty in
executing his orders.

The detachment marched, accordingly, into the pass. In a few hours a
spent and breathless messenger came from them, asking for
re-enforcements. The re-enforcements were sent. Toward night a remnant
of the whole body came back, faint and exhausted with a long and
fruitless combat, and bringing many of their wounded and bleeding
comrades with them. The rest they had left dead in the defile.

Xerxes was both astonished and enraged at these results. He determined
that this trifling should continue no longer. He ordered the Immortals
themselves to be called out on the following morning, and then, placing
himself at the head of them, he advanced to the vicinity of the Greek
intrenchments. Here he ordered a seat or throne to be placed for him
upon an eminence, and, taking his seat upon it, prepared to witness the
conflict. The Greeks, in the mean time, calmly arranged themselves on
the line which they had undertaken to defend, and awaited the charge.
Upon the ground, on every side, were lying the mangled bodies of the
Persians slain the day before, some exposed fully to view, ghastly and
horrid spectacles, others trampled down and half buried in the mire.

The Immortals advanced to the attack, but they made no impression. Their
superior numbers gave them no advantage, on account of the narrowness of
the defile. The Greeks stood, each corps at its own assigned station on
the line, forming a mass so firm and immovable that the charge of the
Persians was arrested on encountering it as by a wall. In fact, as the
spears of the Greeks were longer than those of the Persians, and their
muscular and athletic strength and skill were greater, it was found that
in the desperate conflict which raged, hour after hour, along the line,
the Persians were contin